


Good Friends and Ardent Enemies

by jottingprosaist (jane_potter)



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Backstory, Delvin is terrible and also I do terrible things to him, Domestic Violence, Gen, Sexual Harassment, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-30
Updated: 2018-09-30
Packaged: 2019-07-20 14:37:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16139303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jane_potter/pseuds/jottingprosaist
Summary: Delvin Mallory has a past, which doesn't stay as far in the past as he'd like. He's been through the orphanage, the Dark Brotherhood, and the Thieves' Guild; he's been the Heartbreaker of Solitude and the most wanted man in Skyrim. But somehow he keeps ending up back here.





	Good Friends and Ardent Enemies

As a matter of self-preservation, a man needs good friends or ardent enemies, for the former instruct him and the latter take him to task. (Diogenes)

 

* * *

 

It wasn't what Delvin would have called an auspicious start to the day when Brand-Shei decided to gouge him for a couple bottles of San’s Spiced Wine. Turning on the charm, Delvin tried to haggle the outrageously inflated price down to no avail until Brand-Shei finally gave him a filthy look and added another twenty septims to the price.

“Pickin' on an old man, are you?” Delvin said sourly, but paid the cost of four bottles for two.

Things weren't what they'd used to be. Time was, any merchant who had the faintest inkling of who might be Guild was tripping over himself to be accommodating, not digging in his heels like a cow on its way to the giant’s camp. Delvin might have to have a word about Brand-Shei with Brynjolf...

Ah, but no, there was the man himself, setting up his own stall in the misty Riften dawnlight and diligently ignoring Delvin, as he ought to during the day. No doubt Brynjolf had overheard that travesty of a buy. He'd know the marketplace better than Delvin, anyway. Probably had something in the works for Brand-Shei already.

Madesi, at least, was as obliging as ever, if somewhat late to the market that morning. It helped that Delvin had already paid for his order and was only picking it up. Still, he hadn't expected the lizard to pull out the silk ribbon to tie things all up. Nice to know some folks still remembered who they were dealing with.

Tough times all 'round, it seemed: few months back, Madesi had found himself too short on coin to pay the tax. He'd offered a neat bit of grovelling to pay the Guild in services rendered instead. Fair enough, Delvin thought; gold was gold, and worth all the more when it had been all prettied up into jewelry. Easier to pawn off, too, when it didn't have to be fenced into legitimacy. So Mercer had taken a letter of credit as payment, then had the unfortunate notion to play the letter in a game of Liar's Dice that he'd been handily winning up 'til that moment. Sad that old Mercer never listened to Delvin or Brynjolf about the curse, or he'd have known how quick his luck could tip. (How quick Delvin could make luck tip with just a careful flick of his fingers. Game was called Liar's Dice for a reason, he figured, and cheating was fair enough when your mates were all thieves.) It had been worth putting up with Mercer's snarling for the next month in order to get that letter.

“What a lovely thing this is,” Delvin said, admiring the bit of flash Madesi presented him with before wrapping it to go. Few quick twists of the ribbon 'round his clawtips... and he'd have to have nimble fingers to do that sort of incising around the band, too. Pity Delvin already knew the lizard couldn't be talked into lifting purses on the side. A thief needed nerve, and Madesi had none. “Always good doin' business with you.”

The sun wasn't quite up through the fog as Delvin left the marketplace with his gathersack hanging heavy, but it was still a touch unnerving being out and about in anything less than pitch black. Funny how much bigger the alleys and smaller the nooks looked without shadows filling them up.

Speaking of nooks and what filled them up... Delvin took a saunter over to one side of the road and called, “Now what's a lady like you hangin' about in a place like this for?”

Vex sneered out of her hood and the aperture of the alley that ran beneath a block of Dryside manors. “Just watching some of the saddest bargaining I've ever seen in my life. What the hell was that, Delvin?”

Figured she would have seen Brand-Shei lighten his purse. “Ah, never mind it. I can't be bothered today.” Delvin patted the gifts wrapped up in his gathersack. “Off to see my best girl.”

She was disappointingly unfazed by the hint at his other female preoccupations. “Just because you're going to get laid doesn't mean you should let that grubby little elf get away with making a fool of you. Us. I don't see why you even paid in the first place.”

No use telling her that his old lady didn't hold with thievery. Vex would just mock him. Worse, she'd spread the word about.

“You could always take back the coin yourself, if you're so concerned,” Delvin suggested, continuing on toward the main gate before Vex could retort. There was a time and a place for flirting, and this wasn't it. It didn't do to stand about being seen with friends in public.

But if he looked back for a moment to take in the view as Vex turned about and slunk off herself? Well, it was just a moment, and who wouldn't have wanted a look at those juicy peaches?

Below Riften, there was no escaping the sewer-stink; above it, the reek of fermenting honey and rotten fish was nearly as inescapable; and outside it, the stables were full as ever of horseshit. Couldn't cart the stuff off to the farms fast enough to keep it from ripening. Once Delvin had hands on his horse, though, he would get clear of it all quick enough. She might have been a little shit-maker like the rest of them, but his Mildred had good legs.

Delvin made sure the San was swaddled and packed into the saddlebags tightly so that it would survive the bouncing. Saddled and strapped, Mildred followed him obediently out of the stables and down the misted road a ways so that he could find a tree stump and mount up without Hofgrir or Shadr observing. Delvin was nimble enough when it counted and he'd punch anyone who disputed that fact, but there were some ways an old codger's legs weren't meant to bend anymore.

“Gee,” Delvin murmured, tapping Mildred's flank, and turned her head to the dawn-shouldered Velothi Mountains.

For once, he was riding with his saddlebags full of nothing but honest-gotten goods. Good goods, as it were. The thought made him chuckle. Wasn't the usual sort of outing that saw him striking out with full bags and coming home empty, either. This was a rare trip for him.

The grey-lit woods around Riften were empty of everything but wittering birds as Delvin circled east and south, weaving around rocky outcrops and dense stands of birch. Still, he kept his eyes peeled and his hands ready to conjure something with sharp teeth. He hadn't come so far to lose his throat to a bear— or worse, lose Mildred's and have to walk back to Riften and Vex.

Even with the present threat of shaggy death lurking, Delvin started to relax into the ride as Mildred ambled on. Nerve-wracking or not, the rising run felt good on his skin. Shor's balls, it had been a long time since he'd been out on a daytime trip. Possibly even since the last time he'd visited his old lady.

Near all his work was done in the night. Taverns were about the brightest places he spent time. Simple logic, really: Delvin handled the jobs with the personal touch; to find those jobs, he had to talk to people; and people tended to gather 'round the old mead barrel at night. Plus, they always seemed to feel more at ease coming to him in the dark, as if the guard couldn't possibly overhear while the sun was down. It only made sense for Delvin to sleep the day away.

Well... that and the fact that Delvin was wanted in three different Holds for over twenty thousand septims in all. With the Guild in such a bad state these days, there were plenty of people who wouldn't blink at crossing them to collect a bounty that could set a man up with property and money for years. Being out and about in the Rift's woods was one thing, but the days when Delvin could lark across the Holds to take jobs anywhere he pleased were long gone. Even at home, it was better not to show his face when and where people could see it clear.

Truth be told, Delvin felt foolish for keeping his bounties alive for so long. In his younger years, he'd refused to pay them off out of stubbornness and spite for the law. He'd always said that it didn't matter how long he'd spend in prison— or whether the Holds might pull him right apart so that each of them could get a piece of him— if he never got caught. There had been an element of pride in it, too: imagine being the most wanted man in Skyrim.

Gallus had never liked that streak in Delvin, and as Delvin got older, he'd come to see why. Famous thieves were shit. It was the good ones whose identities were never known.

And now? Now Delvin plain didn't have the coin to pay that much bounty. It was embarrassing, so whenever some new blood got shirty and demanded to know why he didn't take the damn jobs himself, Delvin kept on with the front that he was too proud and then threw the kid a job they'd have to slog across a few mountains for.

But if he could have... yeah, he might've paid.

Or not. He'd wager that Captain Torja still held a bitter enough grudge against the Heartbreaker of Solitude that she'd refuse to accept gold from him.

Delvin chuckled to himself at the memory. From the man who'd made her whole garrison look like fools and then danced right out of her prison, she'd demand her price in blood, she would.

Now those had been good times. Different times. He'd been a different man, too: Delvin Mallory, neatest throat-slitter in the Dark Brotherhood.

An hour or so into the ride, Delvin came across the Great East Road and swung Mildred onto it. No reason to weave her in and out of the trees when there was a perfectly good road to take him where he was going.

...Perhaps not perfectly good. The road was in worse shape than the last time he'd been here. The ground had heaved with frost and Riftfolk had pried out cobbles to mend fences or build houses. Jarl Laila hadn't sent her people to repair anything. Maybe that was to be expected with a war on.

Some ways down the road, Delvin overtook a slow party of riders: two armed guards, a woman who looked even more mortally bored than her escort, and a young man who was no doubt the cause of the dawdling and boredom both. He had pulled his mount off the path to exclaim over some rocks and was carrying on a monologue about poetic symbolism in the direction of the girl. His bride? His affianced, more likely, in the way that wealthy folks often did marriage.

And wealthy they were. It was habit as much as professional interest that made Delvin scope the party out as he approached. Their horseflesh alone would have fetched a princely sum, so he took note of the emblem painted on the guards' jerkins. The Rift was dotted with estates and divided into land holdings that much resembled the tiny fiefdoms of High Rock, from which many of the Rift's new money Breton transplants hailed. Dramatic political and financial coups were so common that it was hard to know from month to month which of these isolated and paranoically guarded estates was in good enough fortunes to be worth robbing. But this particular estate would be having its stables visited in short order. Maven might even like some of these beauties for breeding stock if Delvin's folk could secure the lineage papers as well.

(If, Divines willing, it didn't all go horribly wrong. As it always seemed to.)

As Delvin rode nearer, he caught the girl eyeing him up in return. She seemed glad of the distraction from her dolt of a fiancé. Encouraged, he slowed Mildred to a walk and gave her a more openly appreciative look-over. There was something so charming about sheltered women... the little gestures they thought were daring, maybe. How self-satisfied they were with rebellion. How easy it was to make them blush. Was Delvin admiring her breasts or her shiny pearl brooch? Both, in equal measure. Not that she'd know.

Delvin drew Mildred deferentially to the side of the road but still passed within arm's reach of one of the guards. The sloppy idiot didn't so much as blink.

Maybe it was his earlier reflections still influencing his turn of mind, but Delvin couldn't help but take stock of the group again in terms of his first profession. The plan came as easily as it ever had.

First: cut the near guard's throat. One neat slice from behind as Delvin rode past. Then: heave the body at the other guard. Shove him all the way off his horse if necessary. Then: throw a knife at the girl to keep her from bolting; she'd shriek and startle her mount, might even fall right off. Dismount quick and finish the second guard with a sword. Drag the girl from her horse and use her as leverage to control the fiancé, who would be floundering back out of the trees by then. Throw the girl at the boy as a distraction, then skewer him. Kill the girl.

After that, all that remained was the staging: drag the girl off into the trees a ways and stab her a few times more, turn the boy into dogmeat with his sword in hand, and arrange the guards just so around him. Who'd ever know it wasn't a lovers' quarrel that the guards had been too late to interrupt and too ill-trained to properly avenge?

Delvin winked at the girl as he rode past. She dimpled fetchingly, delighted with her own daring. She'd never guess what he'd been thinking, or that he could have cut her heart out of her chest as easily as squeezing her lovely bosom. Delvin had been too long out of work for Skyrim's maidens to remember that particular fear.

Delvin was disgusted enough by the memory that, with the group at his back, he actually shook his head. Ugh. Heartbreaker of Solitude indeed. Serve him right for taking the extra money to fulfill the bonus details of the contract. Everyone in the Brotherhood, Delvin included, had thought that cutting out the hearts of seven dead women was a little over the top. But then, the sort of man who would pay to have all of his past lovers assassinated was exactly that sort of dramatic and entitled shite.

He'd have gotten away with it if he hadn't taken the bonus.

That was hard-won wisdom, though. Not something he'd had in his youth. As an assassin, Delvin had been even prouder and more spiteful than as a thief. He'd been a year out of the orphanage and only a few years more out of his father's house, and neither of those had been places that made for gentle feeling.

The Brotherhood's Speaker had assumed it was the orphanage that had made Delvin so good and ready to make the world bleed. Delvin had let him. He'd already known better than to open his heart up to anyone, family or not. About everyone Delvin had ever known had been too damned good at getting under his skin and twisting knives in the squishy bits. The only difference with his new siblings-in-trade was that they also happened to be _literally_ good at it.

Strange years, those. Finding out what family really was. Finding out what it was like to _want_ to come home at the end of the day. And Delvin still found it funny that it wasn't until he'd had started living in a den of killers that he'd finally learned to sleep without fear of being dragged out of bed in the middle of the night.

Good years. Good _people_ , bloody hands and all. Speaker Al'Barad, tall and calm as death. Gaunt Geeran with Dunmeri slave brands on his face and no teeth except those he pried out of others' mouths. Pretty little Astrid, who'd put the nick in Delvin's throat-apple that he could still feel all these decades later.

Playing games with Vex just wasn't the same, Delvin reflected mournfully. Not when he knew Vex wouldn't pull out a fingernail if she caught him. Astrid, though— she'd taken skin from him, she had. As much as she could peel off his arm or shoulder before Delvin writhed himself loose and ran, cursing and cackling.

He could have spent the rest of his life fooling around with Astrid, he thought. She'd known not to take his sweet talk seriously, that Delvin wasn't made to be faithful or honest. She'd liked him well enough rolling in and out of bed, or dallying over a fresh corpse in the hot rush as they delayed fleeing. She'd laughed and mercilessly mocked Delvin's string of innocent girls from the cities and inns their work took them to, all of them candy-sweet and crushable between Astrid's teeth. That mocking, too, had been its own sort of dalliance.

Until Arnbjorn had blundered into the family, that was. He'd sniffed around Astrid like a dog in heat, looming and snarling at games that didn't include him until Delvin had been about ready to put a knife through his eye, Brother or not. No sense of humour, that one.

They'd gotten hitched some years after Delvin had left the Sanctuary for the Flagon. He'd only heard about the betrayal months after the fact, while eavesdropping on Gallus and Karliah. How Astrid had settled on an ex-Companion, of all people, was beyond Delvin. Heartbreak over losing him, he liked to think, only mostly kidding himself.

...If he just hadn't taken the damn bonus.

Around noon, Delvin pulled Mildred off the road again and dismounted on a spur of mossy granite. Mildred grazed at the end of her long tether while Delvin ate his own lunch, staring distantly down the long grassy dale. The Rift always looked pretty this time of year, green and growing and full of rabbits. Plenty of good trapping. No need to poach the Jarl’s deer or take an axe down to the neighbouring vale for their winter grain.

Not unless you were a proud bastard who just couldn’t stand being told no to anything. He’d take a deer any time of year he liked, would dear old da, oh yes. No matter if it meant bringing down the Hold guard over too many traps found around the area.

And not a blink of guilt over the way he’d blamed Glover for the poaching, either. Not a second of hesitation before he’d lunged at his oldest son, dragged him out of the house by his hair and set to cursing and kicking him so hard that eventually the guards had intervened just so they could arrest Glover alive. Maybe the bastard had thought he could convince the guards that Glover would get punished worse at home than in prison, convince them not to drag him off— though Delvin wasn’t stupid enough to think that was for Glover’s own good. Afterward, the old man had done nothing but give Delvin his brother’s share of everything and snarl at how he was supposed to run a house with one son left to help.

Might be that Glover had gotten the good end of that deal. It would be the first time Lady Luck ever helped a man by getting him _into_ prison. But Glover had made a few friends in lockup, and he’d used those connections to join the Thieves’ Guild after getting out. He’d even set himself up sweet with one of the Guild’s armorers, Vanryth. Not that they’d found this out, back home, until ma had written to the Jarl begging for her son back only to be told that Glover’d been free as a bird for half a year. After the screaming was over, da had snatched a neighbour’s horse to ride all the way in to Riften and almost gotten himself arrested for dragging Glover out of Vanryth’s house in the middle of the night.

Delvin hadn't known _that_ until later, either. Only that the old man had come back alone and they’d all paid for it.

It had taken Delvin a long time to forgive Glover for never coming home. For a while he’d thought he never would. It had driven him mad for years, the thought of Glover out in the city, fat and happy on Guild contracts, no doubt getting his dick sucked on the regular by his dark elf friend. Then Speaker Al’Barad had seen Delvin polishing the knife with Glover’s name on it and inquired. It wasn’t a sin to kill a brother, only a Brother, so Delvin hadn’t expected to be dissuaded. Hadn’t taken it well, at first.

“Hold off, if you can,” Al’Barad had advised, having mildly contemplated Delvin raging out the whole betrayal. “You can always kill him later, but you can’t put breath back in a body. A blood bond can be useful to exploit. You may want it one day.”

He’d said ‘want,’ not ‘need,’ so Delvin’s pride had accepted it. Good thing, in the end. If Glover hadn’t come through with that offer to bring Delvin into the Thieves’ Guild, his falling out of the death business would have had a stickier end.

Delvin didn’t realize how hard he was brooding on the thought until a sharp pain lanced through his jaw. “Bollocks,” he muttered, rubbing the tension out. The pain didn’t entirely go; his teeth were badly worn from years of grinding his jaws just so. Recent stress over the Guild hadn’t helped any.

Tempting as it was, Delvin didn’t break into the wine to cure his pain. A half-drunk bottle made for a poor gift. The silver flask tucked in his boot was there for just such emergencies: Wayrest whiskey, always good for what ailed ya. Ma had kept a bottle under the floorboards and dosed any number of his cuts with it, back in the day.

The first swig he swallowed, then coughed; the second he swished until his piercing tooth pain went dull. A third drink was for shite memories, with a wry salute of the flask down the empty dale. Then Delvin capped the flask and whistled at Mildred.

“Don’t give me none o' that,” Delvin told Mildred’s switching tail. “There’s oats for you at home. Walk your fat arse there.”

Once he was mounted, with some cursing, he set off west again. Having had some time out of the saddle, his arse was now complaining about the ride. Gods, but he _was_ getting old. Out of shape. But damn him if it wasn’t more comfortable to do his dealings over mead and under a snug roof than out and about in the wilds.

Work didn’t take any thief out this far to the mountains, though. Beyond the estates, there was nothing worthwhile east of Riften. It was all farms and isolated homesteads, pigs and orchards, and the occasional village sprung up from what had been an enclave of bandits three generations ago. Dark elves, too, them that had trickled in by the south ways rather than up north. Nobody worth robbing. Far enough from civilization that they didn’t take kindly to outsiders.

Ahead, there was woodsmoke that marked one of the last villages on the Great East Road. Delvin sighed and heeled Mildred to keep her walking up the hill. He’d have liked to avoid it, but there was no good place to cross over the stream for miles except the bridge yonder.

Suspicious red eyes watched him all the way through the village. Gangly grey children with shaved heads stopped to stare in that way kids had, where Delvin couldn’t for the life of him tell what they were thinking. You’d have thought it was _their_ road, the way they reacted. Or maybe it was the war on.

“Afternoon,” Delvin said, smiling to a woman who was mending on her porch. She frowned, her prominent ridged brows deepening further yet. He resisted the urge to tell her that she ought to smile more.

Just through the village, a moss-slimed bridge arced over the stream. The bridge was lined by fishermen— fishermer?— who moved reluctantly to let Mildred pass. She clopped over, too placid to mind their proximity even though it made Delvin itchy about his saddlebags.

“Hold a moment, friend!”

Just over the bridge, he reined in and looked back. A woman in clerical garb was running down the thoroughfare with her robes hiked up, every inch of her distinctly Imperial and deeply out of place in a town of dark elves.

She puffed a little as she caught up. “Stendarr’s mercy on you this day, traveller. How are you?”

“Can’t complain,” Delvin said, eyeing her with some surprise. Odd to see one of Stendarr’s lot without plate and steel. Judging by her accent, she must have come up from Cyrodiil to do her charity and conversion bit on the locals.

“Good to hear. Are you headed north, by any chance?”

“Could be. What for?”

“I have a few things that need delivering. It’s been too long since a courier came through. Could you see yourself in the service of the Divines today?”

“I hate to say no to an opportunity. What sort of delivery we talkin’?”

“Tonics and salves, mostly, and the alms for a couple of families.”

Even as his greedy little heart jumped for joy at the windfall, Delvin realized he couldn’t take it. Any other day than this, he’d whistle a jaunty tune and make right off with the gold that had just fallen in his lap. But when he was bound for his best girl? About to go look her in the eye with stolen alms in his pocket?

“Second thought, it don’t sound like my sort of thing,” Delvin said gruffly. He yanked Mildred’s rein a little too hard, making her squeal as she jolted around and set off. Behind him, the priestess cried out in exasperation.

Awfully thin skin for someone who lived in a village of dark elves, Delvin thought. They might tolerate her for the healing, but they surely didn’t have their arms wide open.

Priests. Always a oblivious lot. Nothing worse than a sanctimonious naif with an agenda. Well— a sanctimonious naif with an agenda _and_ the pure stupidity of Maramal, to think that anybody wanted a sermon while they were drinking at the Bee and Barb.

She’d find somebody else to take her deliveries, though. At least she wasn’t brainless enough to go tramping into the foothills herself, heedless of any danger just because she wore a holy symbol.

...What had that priestess’ name been? Unbelievable that he couldn’t remember it.

He’d never forget that face, though.

She’d come down the way in, what, Hearthfire or Frostfall? The ground had been hard to crack with a spade. Her robes had been the finest things Delvin had ever seen, and her opulent amulet of Mara ten times shinier than ma’s worn wooden thing, which ma had kept under her mattress except when she wore it to try to shame the old man out of a violent streak. There had been more homesteads in the glen back then, enough to merit visiting by itinerant priests.

“Easier to get married in the Rift’n anywhere else in Skyrim,” ma had said, kneading piecrust. “No need to go to Mara. Mara comes to you, and more’n any other hold. They practically beg you to get hitched.”

“Beg for your food and coin, too,” da had growled too loudly, ripping feathers from the goose with undue violence.

She’d heard that, the priestess, from the corner where she was trying to chat with Delvin. He’d been a stone, trying to tell her with his eyes that da’s foot was tapping. But there would be pie for supper. Priests visiting couldn’t be all bad.

Ma had soothed and Delvin had kept quiet when dear old da started on the whiskey, when the pie came out burned, when the goose was dry. The priestess hadn’t gotten it, though. She’d asked the old man to put more wood on the fire, complaining of chill, even though the wood inside was gone. She’d smiled through his dark stare until he stumped outside to fetch from the woodpile. Gods, how could a person be so stupid?

She’d pried. She’d poked and picked away at every conversational thread, keeping up a prattle when there should have been silence a long time ago. The pie had gone sour in Delvin’s stomach as he watched the old bastard hold his temper behind a stony facade, knowing that every second was making the coming days worse and worse. No Glover to divert any attention, and _that_ would definitely come up since the priestess had been asking about their children. Oh, two? Where was the other? How long? Did they plan to have any more? Of course, Mara was with all her children, even if they were away from their parents, even in the dark of a prison.

And in the morning… Oh, their hospitality had been so good. She did have other couples to visit eventually, but would they mind if she stayed another night?

Sometimes, Delvin thought that maybe she’d sensed what was under the surface. Maybe she’d thought she could help.

Naive idiot.

Gods help her, that night she’d asked about their marriage. Not so harmless any more. They’d been married for… nineteen years? Was everything all right? Ma seemed strained, tired. Oh yes, of course, marriages took hard work, but they shouldn’t be unhappy all the time. Mara wanted her children to be read from the Book of Love and be joyful.

Delvin could still feel the clutching pit of his stomach, the paralysis of terror. He’d wanted so badly to leave the room, but fear of drawing attention to himself had kept him rooted to the chair, staring at his dinner plate. He hated green beans to this day.

And she’d gone one and on about how it was important to help each other change their flaws and become stronger people. Marriages depended on mutual support. What was— Did he usually talk to his wife that way? There was no call for blasphemous language like that. Yes, yes he should watch his mouth. She was a priestess of Mara!

From everything she’d seen, she was seriously concerned. It wasn’t right to treat his wife like that. Did he always act like this when he was drinking? Mother’s Love, how could he talk like that in front of his son?

But he was a proud old bastard, and he wouldn’t be told no to anything. Not in his house. He’d talk how he liked, to whoever he liked, even some wet-eared milk-sucking priestess whore sticking her nose where it didn’t belong, and if she didn’t learn her place he’d teach it to her.

Stupid, stupid woman. She’d stood there trying to hold up to the old man’s looming height, refusing to let ma clutch her arm and get in front of her, not even knowing how much it meant for ma to be _getting in da’s way_. Chin up and face flushed with indignant rage, she’d threatened to call the guards.

Delvin couldn’t remember the details— or anything, really, beyond da swinging the kindling axe at the priestess’ head in one swift blow.

The crack of her skull— the thud of dead weight hitting the floor—

It had been so cold outside, without even his shoes on. So hard to break ground with the spade, in the pitch dark forest, da cursing beside him as they struggled to scrape out a hole between roots big enough for the warm body on the ground behind them.

When the body had rolled into the pit, her eyes had stared right up at Delvin. Thinking in that moment that she was still alive despite the axe wound split right through her forehead, he’d pissed himself.

“Sithis in the Void,” Delvin swore, enraged at himself and the world and this damn trip for making his memories come back as they hadn’t in years. His gut quivered like he was thirteen all over again. He dug his flask out and swigged hard.

He swayed in the saddle, throat and stomach burning already. That was better. Not as good as stabbing someone in the gut until his hand went numb and the rage fuzzed out, but better.

Delvin capped the flask, blinking hard at the bright sunlight and rustling leaves all around. It wasn’t enough: the memories weren’t going. They wouldn’t go until he’d moved on from that night. He had to remind himself how it had really happened.

The bastard had gone to prison. He’d ended up far, far away. The grave had been too shallow, and wolves had pulled the body out by morning. A neighbour had found it in his orchard, and the guards had known her by the fine blood-soaked robes, even without the pearl-crusted amulet of Mara that da had ripped off her neck. And the glen had been too small for any household to escape searching.

They’d taken him away. They’d taken him far away.

Come to think of it, might be that Lady Luck had also blessed Delvin by sending a man to prison. Da had gone to Riften, ma to Whiterun, and Delvin to the orphanage.

At least he’d handled it better than some. There had been soft children, come from sweet homes cruelly ruined, who had been reduced to crying shells by dear Grelod’s kind ministrations. Delvin had already known how to live that life.

And he was out. He was here now.

Delvin was reaching for the flask again, stomach still too watery for his liking, when the roar of a conjuration nearby made Mildred squeal and jolt. “Woah!” He reined her in, stretching out his own hand toward the noise. Before his magicka had finished gathering, an atronach made of stone and swirling storm erupted from the bushes in a wave of reeking ozone.

“Hold on!” Delvin yelled. “It’s me! Call it bloody off!”

His spectral wolf emerged from Oblivion a moment later— far too late to have stopped the attack. But the storm atronach had already halted. After a moment, it began to drift away.

Delvin stared, cold sweat everywhere, before grasping for self-control. He shook it off and slid down from the saddle, clumsy on the dismount, which made Mildred dance sideways with her head tossing. Cursing her, but in a whisper now, he regathered the magicka to cast Courage. His grasp of Illusion better than Conjuration: nothing better for a sneak than to quiet dogs and walk invisibly past humans. Time hadn’t dulled that skill, at least.

He lead Mildred, now docile, after the atronach. Around a clump of coppiced hazel, a beaten trail appeared. He’d been so close and hadn’t noticed. Too lost in his damn head.

Waiting where the trail became a clearing, deep in a ring of cultivated orchard, stood a short woman in a grass-stained apron, leaning hard on a cane set with chunks of focusing crystal. She was weathered and grey, blonde no more, with a sloping posture and Delvin’s squint.

“There she is,” Delvin grinned, as if he’d experienced nothing more than a leisurely spring ride. “How’s my best girl?”

Aurine Mallory laughed, though the right side of her smile was considerably slacker than the other. She slurred a little in replying, “You must have prettier girls’n me in the city.”

“None to be found,” Delvin said easily. “You’re the loveliest.”

She had been, once, and it wasn’t age that had taken that from her. Nowadays, Delvin was determined not to let on that he even saw the scars on her forehead, the droopy eye, the crooked nose, or the lumpy cheekbone.

“Is it Rain’s Hand already?” she asked, as Delvin tied Mildred’s rein to a crabapple tree, out of reach of the vegetable garden.

“Just barely,” he said, though it was two weeks gone. He came up and put his hands on her shoulders, allowing her to relax before he drew her into a gentle embrace. “Hello, ma.”

Aurine’s arms wrapped around his middle, the left embracing fiercely and the right hardly at all. She leaned on him unevenly, gravitating toward her right side now that she no longer balanced on her cane. To Delvin’s relief, there was meat on her bones: not as much as his, but their bellies did bump. The families down the glen had been bringing meat, and not stinging on the fat either.

She was weak, though. Weaker than a Breton woman with such strong merish blood should have been at her age. It had taken decades for her to recover this much from the brutal dent in her skull— still visible through her thinning hair, when Delvin looked down— and this was as good as she’d ever get.

“I’m just gettin’ the weeds,” Aurine said. “Didn’ think you’d be here today. I’ll get the fire on...”

“Never you mind,” said Delvin. “I just ate. And I brought plenty o’ nice things to share.”

Aurine relaxed, probably without realizing it. Thirty years gone from the old man’s demands for a hot meal and she still trembled to make a visitor wait. Delvin gave her a squeeze and went to fetch his gifts from the horse.

“Here we are,” he grinned, hefting the whole saddlebag over his shoulder. “Let’s see what there is.”

“That’s not all for me.”

“Course it is. Trade’s good in the city. War or not, I get my shipments comin’ in regular.”

Behind them, Mildred gave a sharp squeal and kicked; Delvin’s summoned familiar yelped and vanished in a swirl of collapsing energy. He winced a little at Aurine’s raised eyebrow. Meanwhile, Aurine’s atronach was drifting away around the house in a crackle of ozone, off to patrol the orchards since it was already here. Such a Daedroth was far too powerful to be killed by an ornery horse, or Delvin’s wolf for that matter. Aurine Mallory worked her magic better than that.

But for all that she could have killed anyone she liked with just a wave of her hand, she’d never raised a finger to her husband. Delvin had never understood what kept her from protecting herself. Or her sons. Still didn’t.

He supposed he couldn’t hold that against her. She’d paid for it.

The murder of the priestess had been Aurine’s breaking point. When Delvin and the old man had stumbled back in from the forest, she’d been raging. Screaming. In nineteen years, she’d never been so distraught. Well— if she had, she’d likely have been buried in an orchard long ago.

With blood already on his hands, the bastard hadn’t put up with it.

The Hold guard had arrived around midday, following word that the priestess had been lodging at the Mallory house. They’d found da chopping wood outside… and ma unconscious in the bedroom, head battered bloody, and Delvin locked in with her, crying and groggy from the lump on his own skull.

When the guards had found blood on the floorboards, da had tried to tell them that the priestess had attacked his wife and son, that he’d killed her in self-defense. They’d hauled Delvin out to stand woozily in the sunlight, whimpering from the piercing light, the confusion, the anxiety of listening to guards inside the house labouring over ma with half-baked Restoration spells while the old man lied in front of him.

Da’s glare had pinned him like a spear when they asked Delvin: Is that true? Is that what happened?

For the first time in his life, he’d defied the old bastard. He hadn’t known, until that moment, that he had the strength to.

Soon after da was dragged off, ma was loaded hastily onto a cart to Whiterun. Nobody local knew enough to fix the crushed hole in her skull. They’d barely kept her breathing on the way. Even under the care of the healers of Kynareth, she’d not woken for two days, and then… it hadn’t been right. She had slumped like a body half dead, unfocused, incoherent, and prone to seizing without a moment’s notice. It had been worse than the priestess staring glass-eyed from the grave.

For all that Delvin had begged and sworn that he could take Aurine home and be a better man of the house, the Jarl had sent him off to Grelod. Both parents still living, he’d gone to the orphanage.

Inside, the Mallory house was much the same as it always had been. Dustier, maybe, and emptier. On every surface, objects were clustered to the left side, where Aurine could see and grasp them better. All else remained, down to the too-large bed in the room behind the fireplace with the lock outside its door. It made Delvin itch.

“You need more wood?” he asked, setting down the saddlebags. “I can get that.”

“Don’t you run off again,” Aurine ordered. She beckoned him over. “Come here and let me see you.”

Delvin’s gut clenched. He went.

Aurine reached up and held his face in both hands. Eyes like flint, she said, “Look me in the eye and tell me you ain’t killed anyone else.”

Of course she hadn’t let that go. She never would. How could a mother ever forget that her son was Heartbreaker of Solitude?

He’d taken the bonus, he’d gotten sloppy, and he’d gotten caught. All the way across the country from the Brotherhood’s sanctuary, there’d been no hope of assistance, no Astrid or Geeran to spring him loose. Delvin had broken out of Solitude’s prison barely an hour before Captain Torja was due to take his head, and it had cost him three toes and a good deal of blood. He’d run with half an army on his tail.

Word had travelled faster than he could, starved and limping through the backwoods. Torja had hired the Companions to hunt him beyond the borders of Hjaalmarch. Guessing that she’d do as much, and not daring to lead pursuit back to the Sanctuary, Delvin had turned to the only other shelter he knew.

“Did you do this?” ma had asked, trembling all over, his bounty notice crumpled in her palsied fist. There he’d stood, darkening the doorway of home for the first time in years and doing it like a bandit, unshaven and grimy, hunted to trembling exhaustion. He’d never been able to lie to her.

He’d never terrified his mother before. Becoming just like his father was a monstrosity he could have lived without.

“I swear,” Delvin said, staring Aurine dead in the eye. “I haven’t killed another soul.”

“You steal these things?”

“I bought ‘em honest. Every one.”

“You hurt anybody to get ‘em?”

“Nobody. I swear.”

She held him fast for long, searching seconds before finally nodding, grimly satisfied.

His skin crawled with humiliation, but he endured it. He couldn’t say her scrutiny wasn’t deserved. He was lucky that she’d ever let him cross her threshold again. Her condition, decades ago, had been singular and final: he could never take another life.

Hard to stay in the Brotherhood after he’d made that sort of oath. Crawling into the Thieves’ Guild beneath Glover’s wing had been a humiliating retirement, nearly a ruination. Glover hadn’t understood how Delvin could wish he was still an assassin, or mourn the loss of killers as if they were family. But slowly, Delvin had adjusted. In a den of thieves, everyone had their secrets; they knew better than to pry at his. Partly as a favour to the Brotherhood, partly as an investment in Delvin’s light-footed talents, the Guild had let Delvin wait out the pressure of his bounties for months, learning all the while about literacy and forgery from Gallus, numeracy and bookkeeping from Mercer, and no small bit of Illusion magic from Karliah. They’d made him a force to fear for all new reasons.

It had all gone downhill since then. Looking back, Delvin sometimes couldn’t believe how far the Guild had fallen since those glory days. Kids these days got a bunk in the Cistern and a seat in the empty Flagon, and only thought that was a step up because they’d come from gutters or pig farms or bandit camps. They didn’t know there was more to dream of.

Delvin knew better, and cursed or not, he wanted to get back there. He’d been worse places. If any piss-drunk power out there in the Void thought it could stop him from getting what he wanted, it hadn’t yet reckoned on tangling with Delvin Mallory.

True to his word, Delvin had kept his shipments coming in. It was worth all the hassle, all the rotten bloody luck, to sit here and watch his mother’s face as he presented her with the takings of a good life. Aurine was hesitant at first, as she always was, to accept too much. But Delvin pressed on, uncorking the Spiced San, pouring it into a jade goblet with a wide, heavy base that would be hard for Aurine’s unsteady hands to tip. There was a sapphire amulet to ward off the winter’s chill, a silver hair comb to bolster Aurine’s flagging strength, and Madesi’s pretty gold ring just for flash. There were furs to keep out the wet and new dresses so she didn’t have to mend what was torn, and they all flattered her merish gold-green eyes. Eventually Aurine accepted, because this was all proof that Delvin had made good with his life, and she was proud.

Delvin kindled up the fire and parceled out some food, that which wouldn’t keep for long: jazbay grapes and sweet pink apples, candied slaughterfish and salmon roe, fresh bread in elaborate braids and boiled creme treats sticky with glaze.

“Took some gettin’, this did,” Delvin said, as he and Aurine spread duck liver paté on bits of poker-toasted bread. “No respect for proper High Rock cuisine in the city.”

It encouraged a snort from Aurine. Snickering like children, they sat exchanging pretentious opinions about fussy food that poor Breton hill dwellers like themselves had never eaten before Delvin’s money had made it possible.

Smoked sausages, several wheels of eidar cheese, and an entire cured ham went into the chilly rock-lined cellar. Aurine couldn’t do the steep stairs anymore, but she had no problem levitating things in and out. Purely to keep his crackling knees a secret, Delvin carried everything down by hand. The rest of the little gifts at the bottom of the saddlebags were packets of spice from the Khajiit traders, including a pot of glittering pink moon sugar. Aurine oohed especially over the little jar of truffle salt, as much for the glass jar with its delicate screw-top as for its expensive contents.

“I’m glad things are goin’ well in the city,” Aurine said at last, sitting back in her pillowed chair. Her fond look made Delvin swell. “I suppose you must be too busy to visit more. I can’t complain.”

Over a twinge of guilt, Delvin said, “I come when I can.”

“I know, I know. I’m not complainin’. I’ve plenty here to do myself.”

“Don’t like you bein’ alone out here. You sure I can’t send someone to live with you? Just say the word. I could find—”

“No,” Aurine said firmly. “I don’t need any strangers in my house. The neighbours check in on me enough.”

They ought to, with how much Delvin paid the sons to keep Aurine’s house under watch and her larder stocked. The word of the Guild didn’t mean shit out here; it was smuggled Cyrodilic brandy and a favourable rate on their produce in the city market that kept the neighbours paid, and lately he’d had to supplement that with raw coin because the market rate couldn’t be guaranteed. At least there was no risk of word getting back to Aurine: everyone in the glens knew well enough to keep their mouths shut about whatever illicit coin they could make to keep from eating slop alongside the pigs.

“You heard from Glover?” Aurine asked, her hope too much to hide. “He ever write to you?”

Delvin’s gut soured. “He don’t say much,” he said, sidling around the truth, which was that Glover wouldn’t say a word about their mother for any price, and showed no signs of giving that grudge up for the rest of his life any more than he had in the last thirty years. “Keeps to his work, mostly.”

“I sent a couple more letters this winter,” Aurine persisted. “They must have got there by now. Unless the war’s gettin’ in the way that much?”

“Could be. You know, his letters are still halfway to chickenscratch. Don’t think he likes writing, still. They ain’t much to look forward to.”

Aurine’s mouth still pulled with a desperate unhappiness that Delvin couldn’t stomach. Restless, he got to his feet and shuffled the dishes around. “I ought to have a look at the roof,” he said. “Thought the shingles might be goin’ in that corner—”

“Delvin, don’t,” Aurine begged. “Come sit down again.”

“It’ll only take a minute.”

“Delvin.”

Reluctant and _angry_ , Delvin turned back. He came all this way— came back again and again, all this time— and she still wanted to put him through this?

“I know you don’t want to hear it,” Aurine said quietly. She sat sad and small, looking at her hands. “I don’t blame you. I haven’t… made it easy on you to...”

“It ain’t that, it’s—”

“I don’t expect Glover to forgive me for it anymore,” Aurine said. Delvin’s jaw clicked shut. “The way I was about your father. I wouldn’t… I didn’t let Glover say a word about him for a long time, did I. Or you. Can’t imagine that was easy.”

Delvin kept his mouth shut, because he couldn’t lie.

“Wouldn’t hear it from the priests, either,” Aurine said. “Couldn’t. After all those years I put in, I couldn’t bear thinkin’ it was bad. He was— a very troubled man, and I was strong and brave, and I was helpin’ him. I had to help.”

All this time. Every time.

“But I lost you both over it,” she said, her voice trembling a little. And that was… new. “He put a hole in my head and I kept on stickin’ up for him and I drove you and Glover both away.”

“No... ma—” Delvin tried. It was so much a lie that Aurine tossed him a sharp look before he could manage anything.

“If your brother ever writes me back, it’ll be a miracle. And some days I don’t blame him. The things we went through...” Aurine looked out the window, and very carefully, with great effort and precision to articulate a truth that would once have gotten her killed, said, “He was bad to us.”

“Aye,” Delvin agreed, quiet.

“It was wrong, what he did. The way he treated us. Me. His children.” Her mouth wobbled. “And I didn’t do a damn thing to keep you safe.”

“You did it all,” Delvin said fiercely, going down on his knees hard and grabbing for her hand. His right knee popped and Aurine flinched, and he cursed his own stupidity, but he refused to let her go. “You got nothin’ to be sorry for.”

Aurine gave a wet laugh, utterly unconvinced. She looked sadder than ever. “I owe you an apology.”

“Don’t need it. Wasn’t never your fault. He was a bloody bastard through and through, and that’s the end of it.”

Aurine sniffed and gripped his hand more tightly.

“Some days I think he might still walk back in that door,” she said. The only thing that kept her from seeing Delvin’s flinch was that she was staring down at their joined hands. “But I’m done wishin’ he would. And I forgive him for it.”

Disgusted, Delvin said, “No, _ma_ —”

Aurine caught his face, her eyes set, insisting, “No, you listen. He did his time and he walked outta that prison, and in all these years he’s never shown hide nor hair back to his wife or his sons, even knowin’ I was sick and you were in the poorhouse, and I forgive him that. Might be the only decent thing he ever did.”

“Seems a bloody little thing to get credit for,” Delvin muttered.

“I didn’t forgive him for him, I did it for me,” Aurine said. Her thumb under Delvin’s chin lifted his gaze. “And I wish you would too, for your sake. It’s better if you let it go.”

 

_Wasn’t anything in the world that could have made Delvin forget the way his old man walked._

_Prison had left him bony and ragged, and, somehow, broken. But then, no— he’d often played a very good part for visitors and strangers and the guard. He didn’t have the chance to con his son, as Delvin had remained at least fifty feet away and hidden in the shadows whenever possible as he’d tailed the man for the last day. Delvin had just watched as the bastard blessed the passers-by, and the almsmen, and the innkeeper, and the girl Delvin had paid to tell patrons— really, just one patron— about work to be had on Riften’s docks that evening after sundown._

_It couldn’t have been legitimate work, being held in the dark, but it wasn’t as if the old man would be able to pass up work, fresh out of prison and penniless as he was. Or that he’d have cared that it was petty thuggery, of course._

_He drank the last of his alms in ale and thanked the inkeep and went out into the night._

_Delvin followed, heart hammering so hard it hurt. Every inch of him buzzed. Beyond the blinding terror that rose just from being so_ close _, he was afraid that he was floating too far out of his skull, that his limbs were too numb and his feet might stumble._

 _If he was heard— if he was_ seen _—_

_Lights wobbled over the slimy wooden boards, casting poor illumination on jumbled crates and fishing nets and lapping water that threatened any misstep. Delvin kept his pace, locked on the figure limping in and out of pools of lantern light. His fingertips tingled._

_On the far dock marked by a red lantern, the bastard stopped. He looked up, and around— and Delvin dropped behind a ship’s prow, nearly dead. From the silence, he eventually figured he’d been masked by dark. At last, footsteps continued hesitantly down the length of the dock._

_“Hello? Anyone here?”_

_It took a monumental effort to stand. To approach beyond his cover, nothing but night air and luck keeping the bastard’s back turned._

_In the shadows, a flicker—_

_Nothing. Delvin’s ears were ringing. He was seeing things. There was nobody on the poor fishermen’s docks but him and da, and he damn well knew it. Only criminals went about here after dark._

_The old man coughed. It covered Delvin’s footsteps as he walked, heart pounding, eyes intent— fixated, furious now, unstoppable, closing in like destiny on an arrow, launched, too fast, too far in and too late to stop—_

_Holding something at his neck, the old man heard him, and started to turn._

_Swifter than screaming, Delvin grabbed him by the face and yanked his knife across, in the dark, where neck should have been. His blade caught— cut— and he knew with sickening surety that he’d slit flesh. The body jerked back against him, and it was_ big _. Solid. Strong enough to break him in two, snap his arm, slap his sorry jaw to bits— but the bastard was_ cut _, he was dying, and to make sure of it Delvin slashed again._ Again _._

_Certain that he’d done the job, Delvin shoved the old man off the dock. He went into the water with a splash— enormous—_

_And there was silence._

_The dreaded struggle in the water didn’t come. The deafening noise of disrupted water faded, leaving nothing in the dark but creaking wood and Delvin’s gasping breath._

_Dimly, he could see the figure floating. Still._

_The hot rush of victory flooded over Delvin, and it was every raging joy he’d ever dreamed. He was faster. He was stronger. He was_ free _._

_He stood for a long moment of triumph before reality intruded. His hands were wet and hot. Bloody. He could still feel his knife parting flesh, over and over, like a sick defloration that kept repeating._

_It was disturbing, but not too much. It would fade, no doubt. He just had to get over it and get away. Fumbling a little, Delvin knelt and stuck his hands into the lake, washing hands and knife at once._

_Something glinted on the dock in front of him. Squinting, Delvin picked it up: an amulet of Mara, covered in blood, its leather thong slit._

_A hand like iron clamped over his mouth. Delvin’s whole body jerked so hard that he would have jolted into the water if he hadn’t been held fast against a bigger, stronger form. His knife bounced off the dock and into the pitch-black lake._

_“That’s a knife at your neck, my friend, so don’t you move.”_

_It was. He felt it sting._

_His victory came crashing down._

_“What’s your name, my young friend?”_

_The hand across his mouth removed. He gathered hate and spat, “Delvin. Who the fuck are you?”_

_A chuckle. “They call me Al’Barad. And tell me, who was this?”_

_“A bastard. A dead bloody bastard.”_

_“What for?”_

_“Everything,” Delvin hissed._

_“Mm,” the man said knowingly. “He deserved it.”_

_He didn’t sound like any guard. “The bloody hell do you want?”_

_“Much the same as you,” Al’Barad said. “To bring an end to those who have it coming, out here in the dark. Imagine my surprise that I wasn’t here alone. Very neatly done, I must say. Though you need to keep a better eye on your surroundings.”_

_Delvin took a deep, trembling breath. It was starting to occur to him, somehow, that he wasn’t dead yet, and he might not be headed that way. “You gonna talk all night?”_

_“No. Not wise. Let’s head somewhere else, shall we? I’ll take the knife away.”_

_The pressure eased. The body behind him withdrew. Shaking, Delvin slowly stood as tall and tight as he could._

_“Come and have a drink, my friend. Delvin, was it? I’ve an offer you might like to hear.”_

 

Delvin took Aurine’s hand from his face and kissed it, his own hand as steady as stone. “Don’t you worry about him, ma,” he said, looking her in the eye. “It’s all in the past.”

**Author's Note:**

> 1) I recognize that Bethany Esda has made a decision about Delvin's backstory, but given that it's a boring-ass backstory and also _not given in the actual game canon_ , I've elected to ignore it.
> 
> 2) Almost two years ago, I did one of those "15 minute flash fic prompt" memes, and [Chamerion](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chamerion) gave me "Delvin" and the trope "Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas." (I didn't link to TV Tropes. You're welcome.) Many bad decisions and almost 10,000 words later, here I am.


End file.
